Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1997

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

Júlia Kisfaludi: ‘História domus’-the Postai Museum in 1997

The first event of the year, in January, was a friendly farewell to two retiring colleagues. The library premises were also renovated during the month.

New admission tickets, a new series of postcards and a new poster were ready in February. At an Internet presentation in Sopron, the museum contributed a telephone-card exhibition, coupled with the special telephone sets in the Sopron collection.

In March the museum acquired for its collection of postal history a two-wheeled postal trolley, thanks to a message from a colleague in Szeged. An exhibition was mounted of entries for the children’s drawing competition announced by the Hungarian Post PLC in

1996. The National Radio and Television Board held a meeting at the Radio and Television Museum in Diósd, where the museum reported on its planned CD-ROM on radio history and exhibition for world telecommunications day. Our museums in Budapest joined in the new tourist service provided by the Budapest Tourist Office: the Budapest Card entitling holders to free admissions and city transport. The telephone-card exhibition was transferred to the Postal Museum in Budapest. At a two-day conference for the staff of all the foundation’s museums, there were reports and discussions on the foundation’s tasks in

1997, including public relations, museum research, and administrative and business activities. A series of ‘tea parties to conjure the past’ began, where those interested in recent postal history could meet.

The foundation’s branch of the Telecommunications Workers’ Sickness and Benefit Society held a meeting in April. Museum staff took part in the panel of judges at the competition held on Gervay Day at the Mihály Gervay Postal and Banking Secondary School, and in the subsequent wreath-laying ceremony at Gervay’s grave. A second ‘tea party recalling the past’ was held. Leading staff of the foundation took part in a day’s conference in Studio 4 of Hungarian Television, for the 40th anniversary of the Telecommunications Scientific Society. Staff took part in promoting the National Technical Museum, attending the first national conference of technical museum staff and contributing a lecture. Senior members of the Telecommunications Scientific Society held a series of lectures at the Radio and Television Museum, extending into May. Telecommunications Day in 1997 was marked by a new exhibition and a two-day series of scientific lectures.

At the May celebrations in the National Museum gardens, two connected telex machines and a local-battery telephone exchange were shown. The successful presentation was repeated on Children’s Day at the Agricultural Museum. A meeting for the staff of other museums and private collectors was held at Diósd, to gather material for the CD-ROM on radio history. The Radio and Television Museum was also the venue for an extra-mural lecture by a leading staff member, to students of the technical museum-studies faculty of the Engineers’ Extension Training College. The museum lent court telegraph equipment to the Gödöllő Royal Chateau Museum, where six new rooms were opened.

In June restoration of the postal trolley was completed and put on display in the Opusz- taszer exhibition. The foundation was represented at the annual meeting of the Union of Central European Technical Museums, held in Kassa (Kosice). A temporary exhibition compiled from the foundation’s collection in Sopron was shown in Tatabánya, as one of the events entitled ‘Journey around Matáv’.

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